The recent plea bargains of Edward Morris,
who killed four members of his family, and Ward Weaver,
who murdered two of his teenage daughter’s friends,
belie the central argument of those who want to keep
the death penalty in Oregon — that the death penalty
is reserved for the "worst of the worst." It
simply is not true that the death penalty in Oregon
is for the "worst of the worst."

In contrast to Morris and Weaver, most
of the men on death row killed one person (not many);
many of their crimes were not as revolting as Weaver’s
and Morris’ crimes. Only one other recent death penalty
case (Christian Longo) received nearly the same amount
of publicity as either. The most prolific serial killer
in Oregon’s history, Dayton Leroy Rogers, may never
be put to death because of procedural difficulties
with his case. Yet, despite these realities, the state
of Oregon is committed to putting to death more than
two dozen men you have never heard of and giving the
worst murderers lesser penalties. All these men did
commit aggravated murder, to be sure; but to have them
counting down their days until the state takes their
lives, while people who committed multiple grisly homicides
are living quietly at OSP flies in the face of those
who claim that we only want to execute the worst of
the worst. In fact, it makes the administration of
the Oregon death penalty law look downright capricious.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. When
the death penalty statute was overwhelmingly approved
by initiative petition in 1984, the thought was that
death could be administered more quickly and cheaply
to aggravated murderers than maintaining them in prison
for life. But of the several unexpected monkey wrenches
that have been thrown into the application of the death
penalty statute since then, the most crippling has
been the realization that the costs of actually
prosecuting potential death penalty cases so exceed
the costs of a plea or a sentence of life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole that it drains the
budgets of both district attorneys and the state indigent
defense fund to do so.

And once a person is sentenced to death,
he has more appeals than Odysseus had trials in his "odyssey" back
home after the Trojan War. With all these factors weighing
on prosecutors, is it any wonder that a plea bargain
is seen as the best solution?

But the result of the pleas in these
cases brings into stark relief the fact that the men
on death row are probably those who were "easier" to
prosecute, either because the evidence was clearer
or there were no family members that stood in the way
of pursuing the death penalty. In any case,
what results is a death penalty statute that does exactly
what the US Supreme Court says a death penalty statute
ought not to do.

The whole purpose of the Supreme Court’s
suspending the death penalty in the US in the early
1970s was because its application had become too capricious.
Juries were putting people to death in one county for
an offense that wouldn’t get the same penalty in a
neighboring one. The Court was insistent that in order
to have a death penalty that "worked," methods
had to be developed to rid the process of caprice.

Oregon has shown for all to see, though
the plea bargains of Edward Morris and Ward Weaver,
that the administration of the death penalty in Oregon
is now capricious. As such, the only responsible civil
action at this point is for the citizens of Oregon
to abolish the death penalty. We have a penalty, life
imprisonment without the possibility of parole, which
works. It has been in place 15 years, and not one person
receiving that sentence has ever been released. The
state is protected at less cost through this punishment.

By keeping the death penalty in Oregon
we show that we continue to be "tough on crime," but
on whom are we tough? Certainly not the worst. We will
kill the junkie who happened to murder a person who
didn’t pay his "bills;" a person high on
methamphetamine who killed a hitchhiker he picked up;
a drunken person who killed someone chasing him. But,
we can’t kill a man who sawed seven women to death,
another who killed his family, or one who sexually
assaulted and then murdered two of his own daughter’s
friends and then conducted media interviews on the
slab under which one was buried.

Maintaining the Oregon death penalty
in the face of these new realities is the acme of hypocrisy.

William Long is an adjunct professor
at Willamette University College of Law.